How Many Votes Did Your State Representative and Senator Miss in 2009?

MIDLAND
— The Michigan Senate took 716 roll call votes in 2009, and the House took 682.
Five senators and 11 representatives missed more than 50 votes. Forty-three
Michigan lawmakers missed no votes.

Find
out how many votes your local state legislators missed on the MichiganVotes.org
"Missed Votes Report."

You can
sort this list by name or by number of missed votes. The total number of
possible votes is also listed for each legislator (those who were in office
only part of the year have lower numbers). If you click on a legislator's name,
you can see the actual votes that he or she missed. (If you look up that
legislator on the site's "advanced search" page, you can view these in batches
of 50.) Missed vote totals for previous periods can be viewed by entering a
different date range.

MichiganVotes.org
Editor Jack McHugh says the missed votes lookup feature is a good example of
the power of the MichiganVotes.org database. "In order to obtain this
information anywhere else, you would have to read and record information from
thousands of pages of legislative journals," he said.

McHugh says that in most cases missed votes happen when other
demands within the legislative process call a lawmaker off the floor for a few
minutes, or when serious family or personal issues require absence for an
entire day or longer. "Legislators are people too," McHugh observes. "People
shouldn't jump to conclusions or assume bad faith. But if a legislator
demonstrates a consistent pattern of many missed votes for months on end,
citizens have a right to ask why."